It
is already the Second Sunday of Advent, and the Winter Holiday
Music Festival has not yet featured a hymn appropriate for that
period of anticipatory waiting.
We aim to fix that today with one of the oldest Advent carols, Lo,
How a Rose E’re Blooming.
Although
Americans tend to believe that the Christmas Season begins
as soon as the Thanksgiving dishes are washed, Catholics and most
Protestants are clear that Christmastide does not begin until December
25 and continues for 12 days until the Feast of the Epiphany
on January 6. Before that a distinct
season of waiting and anticipation—Advent—is observed over the four Sundays
before Christmas Day. The songs
and hymns used in worship services were commonly distinct for each season.
Lo,
How a Rose E’re Blooming originated as the 17th Century German hymn Es
ist ein Ros entsprungen—literally “It is a rose sprung up.” The text is a symbolic reference
to the Virgin Mary and makes reference to the Old Testament
prophecies of Isaiah, which in Christian interpretation foretold
the Incarnation of Christ, and to the Tree of Jesse—the lineage
of Jesus.
Written
by an unknown author, it first saw print in 1599 and has since
been published with a varying number of verses and in several translations.
It is most commonly sung to a melody harmonized by the German
composer Michael Praetorius in 1609.
The most commonly sung English version was translated and adapted
by Thomas Baker in 1894 and is included in the Psalter Hymnal
of the Christian Reformed Church and the United Methodist Hymnal in
the United States.
It
is a popular choral piece but has also been recorded by popular
artists including Mannheim Steamroller, Linda Ronstadt, and Sting.
Today
we feature a version by the Robert Shaw Chorale from the album Christmas
Hymns & Carols, Vol 1 (Expanded) in 1957 on RCA
Victor Records. Shaw was one of the
best known conductors of the mid-20th Century leading symphony
orchestras in Cincinnati, Ohio and Atlanta, Georgia
but he is best known as a great innovator and popularizer of choral
music in many recordings by his Robert Shaw Chorale. While he was in
Cincinnati and Atlanta he also served as music director at local Unitarian
Universalist churches and some of his church singers joined recordings by
the Choral.
Shaw
was showered with honors in his lifetime including 14 Grammy Awards,
the George Peabody Medal for service to American music,
the U.S. National Medal for the Arts, the French Officier des Arts
et des Lettres, and British Gramophone Award. In 1981 he received the most prestigious
American recognition in the Arts being selected for the Kennedy
Center Honors. He died in
1999, in New Haven, Connecticut following a stroke, aged
82.
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